Capitalism Forever

...and when competition is absent, you're an evil monopolist. Translation: If you're in business, you're bad.

The German guy I had lunch with today told me that Germany's Minister of Health had objected to chocolate makers increasing the sizes of chocolate bars without increasing the price.

It is 100% totally strict, but voting for the least damaging candidate, or invoking the Fairness Doctrine in support of liberty, are not the kinds of things it forbids. Let me give you some example scenarios: 1. An altruist tells you, "One should never refuse any request for help." You reply, "OK, so can you help me please? I need $10,000." When the altruist begins to pontificate about how one mustn't be greedy etc., you interrupt him and say, "I just made a request for help. You're not refusing, are you?" 2. An armed mugger offers you to let you keep either your wallet or your life. Since you are unable to defend yourself and prefer to keep your life, you give him your wallet. 3. An altruist tells you, "One should never refuse any request for help. I need your help--please give me $10,000." You say, "Uh ... of course I agree that it's not a nice thing to refuse requests for help, but ... well ... unfortunately, I cannot give you quite that much right now. Here's $20, though." 4. An armed mugger offers you to let you keep either your wallet or your life. You could defend yourself by shooting him dead, and you know for sure you wouldn't get into trouble with the police for doing so--but you decide to give him your wallet instead because "he's a human being too." Scenario 1 is an example of "making them play by their own rules," which is one of the best ways to fight the irrational. Here, you don't advocate the irrational premise, you just take advantage of the fact that your adversary is already advocating it. This is what Ayn Rand did with the Fairness Doctrine. In Scenario 2, force has already been initiated, so it is not you who bear moral responsibility for the loss of your wallet. You do not sanction the aggressor; you simply choose the option that minimizes the damage done by his aggression. This is what you do when you vote for the "least worst" candidate. Contrast that with Scenarios 3 and 4: Here, the guy agrees with the evil message of the altruist, and thus disarms himself, making it impossible to resist the mooching. He chooses to be looted when he could kill a looter instead. THIS is what we call the sanction of the victim, and this is what you need to forbid yourself with 100% total strictness if you want a life qua man. You see the difference now, don't you?

Come on, don't tell me you haven't heard the quote from Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" The meaning of this is that life without liberty--life as an, ahem, slave--is even worse than death. Life is listed first because the right to one's life is the foundation of all the other rights. The right to liberty is derived from the right to life, as you need liberty to be able to enjoy your right to life: As I said above, life as a slave is worse than death. Letting the thief take your wallet rather than your life does not mean that you give up your right to liberty for the sake of your right to life. You don't even give up your right to property. You just give up your custody of some of your property in order to preserve your life. You still remain the rightful owner of your wallet. In other words, you do NOT compromise your principles. You do not think "OK, I'm giving up my right to property and in exchange he won't kill me--sounds like a reasonable compromise" and then walk on thinking the thief is now the rightful owner of the wallet. You do not proudly tell your friends what a cunning compromise you have made and suggest that they make similar compromises. What you do is simply accept the fact that some of your rights are going to be violated and you act to have the smallest subset of your rights violated. After the violation has happened, you support the police in prosecuting and punishing the violator; if you get a chance to get your property back, you accept it gladly without feeling like you have stolen something from the mugger--because you continue to believe that you have a right to your property. It isn't "Yes, Mr. Mugger, it's a deal" to which you stick like a gentleman; it is "OK, take my wallet, scumbag" and as soon as the threat is over, the pretense of cooperation is over. THIS is why giving the mugger your wallet does not mean you accept blame for the muggery. The government is the mugger. By voting for Bush, you give your wallet; by voting for Kerry, you give your life. Do you now see the analogy?

I didn't make it, unfortunately, so I'd love to see a transcript!

Sorry for asking an off-topic question, but do you mean Sun Microsystems? If yes, which of their practices are you opposed to, and why? Just being curious...

If he were still alive, he would now be an Objectivist.

racist, n.: A person who is winning an argument with a liberal.

Exactly. Iran needs to be dealt with before they nuke us, and Kerry is not only unwilling to do so, he even wants to "cooperate" with them.

I'm relieved to hear that. That's what this forum is there for. Although I've always had some sort of intuition on what it means to be feminine and what it means to be masculine, this discussion has helped me make it much clearer and I learned a lot of new things too.

Slave, if a mugger offered you to choose whether he should take your wallet or your life, would you consider it a "compromise" to give him your wallet? Three words: "Visualize World Peace." Everyone will never stop "compromising with their vote." The fact that you are rational does not make everyone rational.

Argumentum ad novitam (appeal to the new) has been a favorite trick of feminists ever since the death of Queen Victoria. It is a fallacy, of course--as is the argumentum ad antiquitam, or appeal to the old. Age has no influence on the validity of an idea.

Now that's a topic on its own right, and I don't want to get into it here, but let it suffice to name George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as counter-examples. Don't generalize from the Presidents we have these days. If some of them are bad, that doesn't make all of them bad.

LOL Love your translations, Matt! Whoops, in that case, it looks like I'm disqualified as an Objectivist...Egoism has always been self-evident to me. What's good for me is what's good for me--I never needed any proof for that!

Unfortunately for the author, I don't give a damn. I want myself to be better off, not "all of us." I'm rational because I'm selfish, not the other way round, and therefore no amount of reasoning will talk me out of my selfishness. Besides, the claim is not that we will all be better off in every possible situation. The claim is that we will all be better off in most of the situations relevant to our lives, and therefore, all in all, we will all be better off in the whole of our lives. I was going to say that the prisoner's [prisoners'?] dilemma is not one of the situations relevant to our lives--but, come to think of it, the opposite is true: It is THE kind of ethical choice we all have to make in a social context. Although the scenario is designed to make the point that, if we all act in our self-interest, we will all be worse off, it actually shows how, if we all act in our self-interest, we will all be better off than if we all acted on the opposite principle. Assuming that the prisoners are innocent, how would a selfish man in an all-selfish society approach the dilemma? "If I confess, I will get 15 years or I'll walk; if I don't, I will get 20 years or a couple of months: | C N --+------- C | 15 20 N | 0 .2[/code] "Both figures in the 'confess' column are lower than the corresponding numbers for pleading innocent, so if I don't know what the other guy will do, I am better off confessing. Yeah, but the other guy will just as easily arrive at the same conclusion, so what would actually happen is that we would both confess and both get 15 years. The premise that confession is in my self-interest leads to 15 years in jail for both of us, which is definitely not in my self-interest. This is a contradiction, therefore the premise is false; confession is [i]not[/i] in my self-interest. "So I will follow my self-interest and not confess, and--since in this society we [b]all[/b] act in our self-interest--so will my mate. Which is great, because it will get us released in a couple of months." The key assumption is that the individuals [i]all[/i] act on the same principle. If they do, it means that they will take the same action, and thus the outcome will be along the main diagonal in the matrix: 15 or .2. The 0 and the 20 that result from the prisoners acting differently will be outside the range of possible outcomes. The choice is not between 15/0 or 20/.2; it is between 15 and .2--and selfish people will choose the latter. Thus, all individuals acting in their self-interest does indeed lead to the "group optimal" outcome. It is only when some people break the principle that the optimal outcome does not result. In the absence of selfless people--when the selfish prisoner can [i]count[/i] on the other guy making the same choice as he does--there is no need to worry about the possibility of becoming a victim and being jailed for 20 years. And, while in the example the victimizer would happen to end up very well off, in real life the values gained by victimizing innocents are always offset by the other consequences of the act. So the prisoner's (prisoners' whatever) dilemma is actually a rather good analogy of how selfishness does NOT mean theft or fraud (= confessing to get the perceived "0" in the lower right corner) but voluntary trade and cooperation (= going for the ".2" by not confessing).

Lovely pix! Thanks for the link. More pictures of the troops, as well as the enemy, can be found here.

The chosen--in the ultimate sense of the word--is that which you cannot reduce to another cause. IOW, there is no "why" for a choice.

(emphasis mine) An argument is something that presupposes rationality. You may argue against irrationality all you want--the irrational person will remain totally unaffected by your arguments, exactly because he is irrational.

She DID look up to the United States in general as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation, and--given that their political principles were very similar--I suppose she regarded Ronald Reagan as a President worthy of that nation. This is what allowed their relationship to work out so well. The same situation would have looked rather awkward if a woman had been POTUS and a man PMUK, wouldn't it? I agree about GHWB, though.

The amount MS contributes to law enforcement should not depend on the amount of profit it makes. (In fact, it shouldn't depend on anything other than MS's judgment, IOW it should be completely voluntary, IOW it should be a donation rather than a tax.)

My emotional response is that I am appalled at the thought of sensors being inserted into my brain. I suppose I value my brain too much to allow any intrusion into it...

What makes you think so? I am asking because I often hear people make all kinds of assertions about her--and sometimes cannot help feeling that they simply hate her because she is successful.

What do you think is its meaning, then?

An excellent letter. Thanks for posting it! Mister Kelley should be reminded that Ayn Rand's texts are a part of reality; what's more, they are a very valuable source of relevant knowledge on the rest of reality.

See mine